


The Insomniacs' Social Club

by Delphi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, Drama, F/F, Friendship, Gen, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 07:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It began, like so many Hogwarts traditions before it, as a joke."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Insomniacs' Social Club

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 round of Hoggy Warty Xmas on LJ.

It began, like so many Hogwarts traditions before it, as a joke.

Filius had never been a very good sleeper. Ideas knew no conventional hours, and when his brain was bubbling and fizzing along, he knew it was useless to try to quiet it. The library annexe was an unused and out of the way little room on the first floor, and soon after Filius's employment at Hogwarts began, he discovered that it was the perfect place to while away the small hours with a book or a quill and parchment without worry that he'd hear his students likewise up studying after curfew and be forced to intervene.

The sign was a jest. He had stuck it on the door for his own amusement one night, having ruined the other side of the paper with the scribbles of an ultimately fruitless thought experiment, and there it stayed for several days before it disappeared. He thought little of it at the time, but later that week, his ruminations upon 32-across in his crossword puzzle were interrupted by an alarming commotion at the door. He dropped his quill with a hiccup of surprise. The grinding noise sounded like the crank of a drill, and he cautiously waited until it was done before tiptoeing over to the door and peeping out.

He found himself face to face with Argus Filch, who was at that moment crouched down, polishing the brass plate he'd evidently just fixed to the door.

Filius blinked as he read the inscription that he himself had penned: _The Insomniacs' Social Club_.

"Oh dear," he said. "That was actually meant as a..."

Then he caught sight of the library clock. It was past three o'clock in the morning, which seemed a little excessive even to him.

"You're up late," he remarked. This was of course the pot calling the kettle nocturnal, but he had thought the caretaker kept to rather more regular hours.

Argus shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. Figured I ought to get some work done, sir."

Filius hesitated, looking from the dark corridor to the warm little room with its table and chairs and cosy reading nook. "Would you like to come in?" he asked a touch bashfully. "I have a bottle of apple brandy."

Argus seemed to consider that seriously. Then he holstered the drill on his complicated belt and stood up. "Might do," he said.

Filius gladly opened the door wide, ushering him in. "I don't suppose you know your Appleby Arrows captains? Nine letters, starts with a D..."

And so the club was born.

*

 

Sybill never remembered her dreams. That was to say, she remembered dreaming; she remembered having dreamt. She was aware that every night while she slept, matters of great urgency were revealed to her. Sometimes she awoke suddenly enough that she felt the disorienting pleasure of fate pouring itself into the willing vessel that was her unconscious mind. Every night, she knew she dreamed of every secret ever kept, and each time, she swore she could not forget something so important, only to sit up morning after morning, grasping at ghosts and fog.

Tonight, she bolted up with a pounding heart and the word "hallowed" on her lips. Her palms were sweating and her mouth was dry. Her eyes were shut, as if she might hold in the image of her vision, but it was already gone, and after a moment, she let out a shaky breath and groped on the night stand for her glasses. She put them on and looked around the dark room. Then, deciding that she was too startled to go back to sleep, she rummaged for her dressing gown and slippers.

The corridors were cool and full of shadows that swam around her, seeming to hold subtle symbols in their shapes. Nonetheless, her dreams were shed behind her as she made her way down to the library annexe.

A strip of light shone from under the door, catching the polished brass of the little sign, and she slipped inside to find the dull and ordinary sight of Filius and Argus at the table, bowed seriously over a game of checkers, and Septima curled up on the sofa, scribbling at a lesson plan.

She received a curt nod from Argus and a cheerful wave from Filius as she helped herself to some of the chamomile tea that someone had brewed. Then she sat down at the other end of the sofa from Septima, her head full of cobwebs and her hands quite cold.

Septima was evidently too engrossed to acknowledge her, scratching out a line of figures and scribbling in new ones.

"Would you like me to read your cards?" Sybill asked hopefully, supposing one would be bored silly with all those numbers.

"Not even a bit," Septima said.

Sybill dug the deck out of the pocket of her dressing gown nonetheless, and the motion attracted the attention of Argus's cat, which jumped into her lap and attempted to subdue the fringe on her shawl.

"Shoo!" Sybill cried, and Argus looked up, glaring mildly at her.

Septima sighed and held out her hand. "How about I show you a trick with those things?"

Sybill highly doubted that there was anything an arithmancer could teach her with this particular deck, but she handed it over and watched with interest as Septima flipped through the cards, finally selecting one and placing it face down on the sofa between them.

"Think of a number between one and ten."

She did.

"Now square it."

"You didn't tell me there would be maths," Sybill protested in exasperation, taking Septima's quill and paper to do her figuring.

Septima rolled her eyes. "Now add it to your original number. Then divide that total by your original number."

Suspicious, Sybill carefully hid the results, shielding the paper with her arm.

"Now add...oh, it's the seventeenth today, isn't it? Seventeen, then."

She did so.

"Subtract your original number and then divide by six."

Sybill circled her sum, hoping she'd done that right.

Septima turned over the card. It was the Empress. She pointed at the "III" at the top of the card. "Is this your sum?"

Sybill blinked in surprise. "You _do_ have a touch of the sight."

"It's only simple algebra," Septima said. "You see, the first operation—"

"It wasn't mathematics that made you choose this card," Sybill insisted. "The Empress is a very powerful figure." There were many interpretations to the major arcana, of course, but part of Divination was knowing what one's audience was receptive to. She regarded Septima with a glint in her eyes. "It means you're going to meet a woman very soon. A beautiful one."

Septima regarded her with apparent scepticism for a moment, her eyebrow raised sharply. Then she handed the deck back. "All right," she said. "Just one reading."

Sybill happily shuffled the cards.

*

Night time had always seemed intrinsically magical to Aurora. Her parents had been a handsome and popular couple, and as the family lived in the city, the two were always invited away to dinner parties and dances, leaving just before her bedtime in their best dress robes, her father chiding her to mind Nanny and her mother kissing her carefully so as not to disturb that night's perfectly arranged hairstyle.

Thus it had become obvious to her very early in life that anything worth doing happened at night, and Aurora soon trained herself to stay awake long after Nanny had fallen asleep, so that she too could find out what all the excitement was about. Obviously, she was too young to go out on her own, and neither was she particularly inclined to, as she soon found out that dinner parties were tiresome and dances were exhausting. It was the being awake while everyone else was sleeping that she liked, and eventually she took to climbing onto the roof with a book and a snack to keep watch until her parents' return, looking out at the twinkling lights of London, hearing snatches of songs as boisterous men passed below, and on very clear nights, glimpsing the stars above.

In retrospect, Astronomer was one of the more respectable professions she might have pursued as someone who liked to be awake when one day became another. Which was, in a funny sort of way, how she came to be in the position of having a slumber party with several of her colleagues—whom she still secretly thought of as her professors, Mr. Filch excluded—as Christmas Eve slowly turned into Christmas.

It marked the end of her first term as a teacher and the third time she had stumbled into one of these odd little gatherings, and tonight, there was a melancholy air to the room. The snow was falling softly outside, the sky a pale, washed-out grey. Nearly all of the students were gone home to their families, and most of the staff as well.

Professor Flitwick sat in the deep armchair reading a book, occasionally humming a snippet of a Christmas carol under his breath in an uncharacteristically solemn manner. Across from him, Mr. Filch was slouched low in his seat, stroking his cat. Professor Trelawney was playing solitaire, and losing by the looks of it, and Professor Vector was the very image of gothic boredom, reclining on the settee and braiding her gorgeous hair.

Aurora took a sip of tea and looked at the meagre fire. "When I was a student..."

"Oh so long ago," Professor Vector cut in dryly.

She smiled despite herself, even as her cheeks burned. "When I was a student, oh so long ago, this would have been the perfect night for a kitchen raid."

To her amazement, it prompted a fond chuckle from Professor Flitwick. She had expected at least a scandalised tut or two.

"Oh really," Professor Vector said, obviously noting her surprise. "Whatever mischief you got up to was invented by your elders."

"Sneaking biscuits from the staff lounge..." Professor Flitwick said wistfully.

"Toasting muffins in the fireplace..." Professor Trelawney added, her chin in her hands.

"Cold chicken sandwiches..." Professor Vector sighed.

They all paused thoughtfully. Then, as one, they slowly looked to Mr. Filch.

His hand stilled on the cat's back. Then he looked at each of them, eyes narrowed. After a long moment, he said: "...you'll all put your dishes back?"

Which was how the lot of them ended up tiptoeing down the corridors at one o'clock in the morning, stifling ridiculous laughter and dodging the house-elves and the portraits and the suits of armour. Mr. Filch scouted ahead, looking reluctantly amused at their antics—peering around corners before giving a soft whistle and waving them on. They stormed the kitchen and then quickly retreated back to the annexe with their ill-gotten feast.

"Honey?" Professor Vector said as she and Aurora sat in front of the fire with a row of crumpets skewered on the poker.

Aurora blinked and then realised that Professor Vector was in fact offering a jar. She cleared her throat. "Don't mind if I do."

Professor Trelawney was feeding bits of cold roast beef to the cat, who was stretched out contentedly and lustily purring. Even Mr. Filch's spirits seemed to have been lightened by a bit of sherry and a bacon sandwich roughly the size of a piglet.

Professor Flitwick had opened his book again, a cup of hot chocolate at hand, and he began to read aloud:

"Ring out the old, ring in the new,  
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:  
The year is going, let him go;  
Ring out the false, ring in the true."

Outside, the sky darkened as the clouds parted in the cold northern wind, and for a little while, the diamond-bright stars could be glimpsed from the annexe window. Indoors, warm and sheltered, Aurora and the others raised mismatched glasses and teacups to the coming day, and to the coming year, and to good rests and sleepless nights in their proper measure, and sometime before the sun rose upon Christmas Day, Aurora fell asleep on the settee with Professor Vector beside her, to the sound of Professor Flitwick's mellow voice rising and falling over lines of verse, and Mr. Filch's snores, and the soft shuffle of a deck of tarot cards.


End file.
